The opposite of
courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the
flow.
My Dad sent me
this Jim Hightower quote via text some time ago, and it caught me at a very
opportune moment.
Seeds of doubt had
begun to sprout in my mind about the environment being created by the
Australian high performance hockey program. And not necessarily about the hockey specific
aspects of being a Kookaburra, but more so about the distinct lack of ‘extra
curricular’ opportunities our group had steadily and almost unknowingly been
denied.
However, the beat
of the Brazilian drums had begun to grow louder, as Rio poked its head over the
horizon. So I pressed pause on these thoughts and desires, and shifted my focus
back to the hockey field. Until now that is.
The quote at the
beginning of the blog from Hightower brought an issue to the surface that had
been niggling away at me for sometime, but really only came to the surface
recently.
It was 2015 and
the inevitable mental hangover that came with being World and Commonwealth
champions a year earlier was setting in. It felt like the confetti that rained
down on us after those victories had barely been swept away before we were
embarking on a new year of hockey challenges.
The grind of
another Olympic cycle was starting to wear on me. I was starting to wonder what
else was out there. Starting to begrudge the program for not allowing me to
chase my dreams away from the pitch, whilst still committing on it. I wanted a
life outside of hockey, and it wasn’t forthcoming.
Perhaps more
worrying was the fact that about half a dozen bright and bubbly faces arrived
in Perth in 2015 and after only a few short months, our program had already
made it clear that hockey came first.
It this is what made
me ponder the question: Are the ‘in-between’ years (the years sandwiched
between World Cups and Olympic games) for the high performance hockey programs
in this country wasted ones?
Australian hockey
players don’t roll back into a nationally televised and widely received
domestic competition the year after an Olympics or World Cup, and we have few
flagship events coming up on the international calendar. Yet we continue to
train and exist in an environment that is essentially full-time.
Some players are
given allowances to go and play for clubs in foreign leagues, clubs who offer
decent money and a unique hockey experience for six months.
And even though
this is a fantastic experience afforded to us. I see it as a sabbatical of
kinds. A chance to escape the daily grind and monotony of the Perth training
environment. How very Wallaby-esque of us. Except we do it for a pittance of
what those guys earn.
But this isn’t a
‘woe is me’ tale of financial hardship. That’s not why we play the game. Rather,
it is an honest plea to break the shackles of conformity and trail blaze our
way into a new era of semi-professionalism.
The Australian
Men’s Hockey Program has almost become a full-time job, even though we are still
widely considered a semi-professional sport.
I hazard a guess
to say we lodge similar hours to the Gary Abletts’ and Greg Inglis’ of this
world, without the long-term security and compensation that comes with being
amongst the best in our field.
Gone are the days
where our squad was ‘working class’, as ex-Kookaburra Rob Hammond used to say. Guys
like Hammond and Bevan George seemed to wear that tag as a badge of honour, and
have even been heard to credit their outstanding success to this type of
training environment.
This era, under
then-coach Barry Dancer, is arguably Australian hockey’s greatest. They’d be up
before even the earliest birds warbled. They’d have done their dash before the
days fresh newspaper slapped onto your front steps. They’d watch the sun come
up each morning, and knew as their session finished, that today presented
opportunities well outside the sometimes-mundane boundaries of elite sport.
It was from this
blue-collar training environment these two fellows grew to become as Dancer put
it so eloquently earlier, great athletes and great men. May I remind you, they
are also Olympic champions.
I picked up the
phone last year and called Barry Dancer. He was the Kookaburras coach between
2001-2008, and during his regime, Barry implemented a program where athletes
were forced to seek out opportunities away from the field.
Opportunities that
would benefit them later in life, or if hockey didn’t work out. He even said
there was a time when athlete payments were withheld if someone failed to
adhere to the protocol. That’s how serious he was about developing the
‘complete athlete’.
When asked why? He
said he thought that the players needed balance in their lives. They needed
things away from hockey to invest in. He said he also felt some fatherly
responsibility to each athlete he had under his care in Perth.
Most of the guys
had moved from the east coast and he felt it was his duty as national coach to
not only develop good hockey players, but good men with good life skills as
well. I really admire this attitude and outlook.
Toward the end of
Barry’s tenure however, some of his players had started playing overseas and
earning enough money to comfortably support themselves. This ruined the
‘working class’ system.
Why train at 6am
anymore when money earned overseas topped up the heavily government-reliant
funding we received in Perth, meaning work or university was merely just
something that we used to know.
Barry retired
after the Beijing Olympics and Ric Charlesworth took over. This was when the
‘hockey first’ mentality really took over.
Now, we spend our
days training in timeslots like 9am – 11am or 3pm – 5pm. In the last 8 years,
we have trained almost religiously every day of the week bar Sunday. Thankfully
we have recently been given Saturdays off.
Couple this with
club hockey commitments we have on the weekend (which is a serious highlight of
my hockey week) and I don’t have to tell you how many days that means we have
off.
This type of
schedule does have a few positive outcomes though: it could make us the best
hockey team in the world; its family friendly for guys who have young kids to
look after, or for partners who are in workforce; the conditions are obviously
nicer; and the car park is completely empty at that time of the morning.
But in my opinion,
the negatives make a much more comprehensive case: this type of training burns
athletes out, shortening their careers; it severely limits the ability for guys
to work, study or pursue other interests outside of the sport; it doesn’t
acclimatize athletes to the rigors of the ‘real world’; and it significantly
hinders the high performance program athletes ability to stay involved in local
competitions and grassroots hockey.
So that’s my
piece. I guess at the end of the day, hockey will define many in our group.
Either because they want it to, or they will allow it to. But I guess I am
trying to ensure we at least get that choice.
There are some
that harbor desires to stay invested in hockey forever and the sport desperately
needs these people. The really good ones can earn a living off it for many
years to come. But they are the exception, not the rule.
Over the last 10
years our program has made tweaks and added pieces that encourage growth away
from the pitch, but so much more could and should be done.
Either way, I
won’t conform to a future of ‘retired’ athletes with limited support. Take note
Hockey Australia. Put a system in place that not only creates great hockey
players, but great opportunity as well.
Long after we are
all gone, the young men that pull on the Kookaburras shirt deserve to be given the
gift of opportunity. Not a cap of conformity.
Because even a
dead fish can go with the flow.
